What is Cybersecurity?

What exactly is Cyber security is actually a good question. I could call Cybersecurity everything in Information security along with all aspects of communication inside and outside of the internet. Data exchanges and protection of data along with the transfer of it can be included. UMUC shows that Cybersecurity has many components such as national security, law enforcement, intelligence, intellectual property, privacy, and public-private partnerships, described by UMUC. Cyber security entails all within cyberspace and almost all parts of our lives outside of it. Cybersecurity can also be an adjective. It can be described as a challenge, a goal that never seems to be reached.

On a wider scale, Cybersecurity can be about national security or national offensive attacks. In 2007 when Estonia’s government removed a WW2 statue, Hackers from Russia and most likely other parts of the world “retaliated with a costly denial-of-service attack that closed down Estonia’s access to the internet” , Nye. This was extremely costly to Estonia and showed how stopping the internet of a country can cripple a nation. This attacked stopped transactions from banks and businesses also and was basically a disaster to the country’s communication system. Securing the cyber space in Estonia from that moment and every moment afterwards is about national security.

In 2008, the article Cyber Insecurity also discusses that Russian Georgian Conflict. The “hackers attacked Georgian government Web sites in the weeks preceding the outbreak of armed conflict”, reported by Nye. This can also be related to strategy. Our information comes to us from the internet whether we are working in the Military or the government or a private sector. GPS Positions are at stake. The speed of sending information was the initial purpose for the internet and this is a strategy used in war to disable the ability for the enemy to communicate. Russia used this strategy against Georgia during this conflict.

According to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “The cyber warfare threat facing the United States is increasing in scope and scale and its impact is difficult to overstate”

Today’s threat landscape is constantly changing, adapting to existing countermeasures and continuing to successfully pursue various missions ranging from identity theft, to criminal and nation-based corporate espionage. The threat landscape varies anywhere from social media, ideology, insider, organized crimes, APTs, Hactivism, and Script Kiddies to name a few. So much data has been stolen that the criminals have not yet figured out how to use them all. Criminal groups are hiring computer scientists to run their cyber -based scams and mine the results. The term cyber warfare is becoming part of discussions on national security . Cybersecurity is an issue that can impact us at the personal level as users of the Internet and at the national defense level as an advanced, persistent threat. Cyber Security is about constantly understanding the threat landscape, weaknesses of critical infrastructure, financial, corporate and IT infrastructure and establishing a cohesive security program that integrates security solutions, tools, processes, frameworks, defensive and offensive capabilities. Cyber Security has a profound impact on national security